Customers question Apple’s excuse for iPhone 17 Pro and Air scratches

It’s common for an iPhone launch to be accompanied by complaints that the new handsets are faulty in some way. Some years these complaints will snowball into a major scandal, such as Antennagate in 2010 or Bendgate in 2014. Other times they don’t really go anywhere.

Which category does the so-called Scratchgate situation come under? It’s hard to tell at this point, but Apple is doing its best to nudge public opinion in the latter direction.

Scratchgate is, inevitably, the name that’s been given to widespread reports that some new handsets are showing more scratches than would normally be expected. The deep blue 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max and the black iPhone Air “exhibited scuffs after just a few hours of being on display,” according to Bloomberg. It was also noticed that MagSafe chargers were sometimes leaving a circular mark on the back of the iPhone 17 Pro.

Apple responded to these reports last week, blaming the issue on the equipment used to display the handsets in retail stores. The company told 9to5Mac, “it has determined these imperfections are caused by worn MagSafe stands used in some stores. It also clarifies that the marks aren’t scratches, but rather material transfer from the stand to the phone that is removable with cleaning.”

But not everyone is convinced. As Currently‘s Joe Foley points out, some of the reports come not from retail browsers but from people who’ve bought the phones themselves, and unless those people also brought the worn MagSafe stands home with them, that explanation doesn’t add up for them. These buyers “seem convinced that what they’re seeing are real chips and scratches,” Foley adds.

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman addresses the controversy and adds his take. And he’s not entirely buying the excuse either.

“The reality is that the iPhone 17 Pro doesn’t really have an issue on par with past iPhone “gates,” such as the iPhone 4 antenna woes in 2010 and the iPhone 6 bending problem in 2014,” Gurman writes. “But it’s also true that the purely aluminum portion surrounding the iPhone 17 Pro camera area can get pretty scuffed up. And that has nothing to do with the MagSafe leaving marks on the glass area of the devices.”

Whether or not you’re convinced by Apple’s explanation, the easiest way to protect your new iPhone (short of leaving it in the box) is to use one of the best iPhone 17 cases we’ve rounded up and reviewed.

Scratchgate is the catchiest and most high-profile issue to hit the late-2025 iPhones, but it isn’t the only one. Apple itself has acknowledged that a reported photographic problem is indeed “something that can happen in very rare cases when an LED light display is extremely bright and shining directly into the camera.” There have also been reports of a Wi-Fi bug, but this reportedly has been fixed by iOS 26.1.